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There has been much interest in conspiracy theories (CTs) amongst philosophers in recent years. The aim of this paper will be to apply some of the philosophical research to issues in political theory. I will first provide an overview of some of the philosophical discussions about CTs. While acknowledging that particularism is currently the dominant position in the literature, I will contend that the ‘undue scepticism problem’, a modified version of an argument put forward by Brian Keeley, is an important general objection to many CTs. This in turn leads to some substantial conclusions for liberal political philosophy, as the undue scepticism problem sets up a strong argument against non-liberal alternatives to liberal thought. I shall argue that we are justified in having far more doubt about the reliability of official sources in non-liberal societies, and it is legitimate to be more sceptical about claims designed to bolster non-liberal politics. Moreover, because scepticism is often more warranted in non-liberal societies, this may provide the possibility for the state to be stable, even if it is highly tyrannical or ineffective. These considerations are not intended to be decisive, but raise unresolved questions about the viability of non-liberal politics.

Quentin Anderson. Making Americans; An Essay on Individualism and Money. New York: Harcourt, 1992. Pp. 264. John C. Burnham. Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History. New York: Univer- sity Press, 1993. Pp. xviii + 385. George Kateb. The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Pp. x + 275. These three stimulating books elucidate many of the issues which cluster together in the disputes between 'liberals' and 'communitarians both Right and Left'—though this last distinction may no longer apply very clearly in the contemporary conflicts over the permissible variety of lifestyles in a cul- turally plural but not pluralistic society. There are many questions involved: What constitutes a culture? Are some cultures (or lifestyles) intrinsically destructive, and, therefore, legitimately stigmatized? The example of the Thuggee forces an affirmative response, leaving many more questions about where and on what grounds to draw what kinds of lines. In the 1990s, the central question seems to be whether there are universally necessary social structures, which must be supported by stigmatizing, perhaps legally san- ctioning, alternative structures. There are now widespread calls for the re- stigmatization of illegitimacy and single-parent families, for the restoration of older sanctions, like zoning laws, which maintained the moral and legal primacy of intact nuclear families as the necessary social norm and base.

Michael Kammen. Meadow of Memory: Images of Time and Tradition in American Art and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 192. John Bodnar. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1992. Pp. xiii + 296. A couple of generalizations about these two intelligent and interesting books seem as uncontroversial as anything can be today. Beginning from sharply divergent sets of assumptions, they converge to suggest the impor- tance of the protean concept, "memory," in contemporary approaches to cultural history. And, their sharply contrasting approaches suggest the per- sistence of interpretive differences, which seem also to be generational and political, within the notional community of professional historians. Beyond these points, agreement is likely to vanish, and reactions will follow the readers' own axia of understanding.

Susan Stout Baker. Radical Beginnings: Richard Hofstadter and the 1930s. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1985. xxi 4- 268 pp. Howard Brick. Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism: Social Theory and Political Reconciliation in the 1940s. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. xiii 4- 280 pp. Terry A. Cooney. The Rise of the New York Intellectuals: Partisan Review and Its Circle, 1934-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. xi + 350 pp. David Seideman. The New Republic: A Voice of Modern Liberalism. New York: Praeger, 1986. xiii + 205 pp. Alan M. Wald. The New York Intellectuals: the Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. xvi + 440 pp. Stephen J. Whitfield. A Critical American: The Politics of Dwight Macdonald. Hamden, Ct.: Archon Books, 1984. x + 179 pp. It has been argued that the appearance of a formidable stack of books about a small group of writers may be a sign of approaching obscurity, of the turning-point in the history of thought at which their capacity to appear contemporary, to serve as role models, disappears. So R. W. Johnson predicts the decline of the Parisian intellectuals of the 1960s.1 And so it may be with the subjects of this daunting pile, an incomplete selection of works focused on writers active around New York City from the 1930s until now, many of whom achieved first fame in the pages of the legendary journal Partisan Review, with its electrifying mix of Trotskyism, anarchism and belief in the social and ethical value of artistic modernism.

This essay on the middlebrow popularization of the role and influence of psychiatric ideas in the United States suggests that the world view variously described as the secular social gospel, progressivism, or (after about 1930) liberalism can best be understood in terms of the great influence that society's popularized medical models have had upon it. That is, liberal or progressive thinkers came to conceive of society as “a patient etherized upon a table,” an organism subject to illness but able to benefit from therapy as prescribed by trained experts. The popularization of psychiatric models also offered norms of health for the individual and (often by implication) for the group based upon the degree of adjustment to a reality external to the individual and subsuming smooth interpersonal relations and a variety of social norms. The most concrete institutional expression of this popular medical model of human nature and society was the network of local, state, and national societies for mental hygiene, and I have therefore used “mental hygiene” as a shorthand term for the concepts under discussion. However, it should be obvious that the fit between ideal-typical concepts and institutions is never perfect and that there is always a mix of ideas and motives among the individuals who constitute an institution at any one time. The concern here is with ideas and their diffusion, rather than with the close evolution of institutions or the development and effectiveness of therapeutic techniques. Furthermore, while this study is written from a viewpoint somewhat critical of the popular effects of a hygienic mentality, it should not be read as imputing either conscious self-interest or “bad faith” to the advocates of popular psychiatry, who appear to have been sincere, energetic individuals convinced that the diffusion of their own beliefs would have enormous social benefit. One of the regrettable tendencies of recent revisionist history has been a vulgar imputation of a conscious selfseeking or promotion of class interests to reformers and other actors who sought to change their environment—apparently from a Utopian view of what constitutes true sincerity and disinterestedness that finds only contamination in the mixed motives and unintended consequences of action in bourgeois society. A tragic or ironic view of history, obviously, avoids this naive faith and anger by assuming that consequences are rarely exact reflections of intentions, that action is as hazardous and morally ambiguous as it is necessary.

Seymour Martin Lipset, Revolution and Counter Revolution: Change and Persistence in Social Structures. Revised edition. Anchor Books, 1970. $2.25.416 pp. Revolution and Counter-Revolution is a collection of essays written be- tween 1963 and 1968 which develop the themes of Lipset's earlier works, Political Man and The First New Nation. The title is from an essay on Canadian/American contrasts, and may suggest both the fascination of the book and an element of caricature which may be inherent in its ap- proach. Lipset is pursuing a grand program of comparative political analy- sis, with emphasis on the evolutionary process of "modernization" and the national traits which influence its exact outcome. It is a work of great value to anyone interested in area studies, not only for the variety of use- ful information but for an exemplified method which may at the same time both focus and broaden that vaguest and most problematic of area programs, "American Studies."

À partir d’un survol du conflit culturel vécu dans l’influent enclave de la Californie centrale, Fred Mathews s’attache à disséquer et expliquer la résurgence du conformisme conservateur aux États-Unis. Il examine plus particulièrement de quelle façon d’influents historiens américains comme C. A. Beard, R. Hofstadter et P. Miller ont pu éclairer les sources de ce qui peut être vu comme une fuite devant les périls de la société ouverte et comme un refuge en une pseudo-Gemeinschaft commercialisée., Mainly using points taken from a survey of Californian daily newspapers Fred Matthews tries to dissect and explain the rise of contemporary "Mainstream" America. He introduces us to the way three paradigmatic historians, C. A. Beard, R. Hof stadter and P. Miller, have accounted for the sources of this current which can be seen as an escape from the perils of the open society and a refuge in a commoditized pseudo-Gemeinschaft.

This essay attempts to chart the outlines of a major change in the basic assumptions of American social science which took place between 1930 and 1950, and to illustrate it by focusing primarily on the approach of social scientists to race, ethnic and "cultural" groups. The major formal concept involved is that of Culture, already well known by 1930 but becoming central, in a new and different meaning, by the eve of World War II. It is tempting to refer to this change as one of paradigms, but since some historians (perhaps fearful for the truth-value of their field) reach for their uzis at the sound of that word, it might be more prudent to cast light on my central polarity through categories offered by philosophers writing in the 1930s. The Harvard-Berkeley philosopher Stephen Pepper argued that every theory has a rootmetaphor, or basic structural analogy, which the theorizer draws from one "area

Laurence Veysey has recently pointed to the growing fragmentation of the historical community along lines defined "by nation or region of the globe, by time period, by thematic category . . . and by cognitive predilection, sometimes . . . tied to a political outlook." This essay is concerned with the problems that arise from the "cognitive predilections," or interpretive paradigms, based on philosophical preferences that single out some realms of data as decisive and that are often tied to ethical and political perspectives. Carl N. Degler notes that "all historical interpretations are shaped by values, " and Hayden V. White offers a complex map of the "metahistorical" assumptions that interweave to provide the structure of every historical interpretation. Much of the profession, however, seems to resist this insight, holding to the polemic stance of atheoretical empiricism, the jigsaw-puzzle model of scholarly endeavor, which has deep roots in the professional memory. By singling out one major paradigm ascendant in the last generation and then by reviewing some alternatives, I will try to suggest a method for reintegrating a fragmented profession around a renewed historical criticism. 1 Ought our increasing fragmentation to be a cause of concern or even of analysis? It can be argued that it is an inevitable and constructive response to the explosion of output in the last twenty years, to the arrival of interpreta